The Parting Gift

When Craig and I lived in New York we had the opportunity to go to several four-star restaurants.  One detail– aside from champagne while you waited for the rest of your party to arrive, a purse bench,  having your tea leaves snipped right off the plant table side before it was brewed, and a confections cart at the end of the meal– was the small parting gift that was given on your way out of the restaurant. 

This past weekend, Craig created a five-course tasting menu for some friends, and I was inspired to make a parting gift that they could take home with them after the meal.  At first I planned to make canelé, but it was Sunday and you can't buy liquor on Sundays in NC. Unfortunately, we didn't have the rum we needed for the recipe. I opted to make chocolate macaron with a chocolate ganache filling instead. A number of years ago, when we still lived in NYC, I made rose-water macarons with my friend Samantha. That was the one and only time I successfully made macarons– this time I was determined to make it work.

On Sunday afternoon, I went to Craig's catering kitchen and made them all by myself with a little over-the-shoulder supervision and pointers from Craig– and only one tiff about the definition of "test batch".   I'm embarrassed to say that it took me four hours to make a recipe that says it should take 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 hours. In my defense, though, I was taking special care to make sure I was doing every step perfectly. Also, it took some time to make sure the oven was staying at the correct temperature. In the end, the macarons came out pretty well. Although the foot of the macarons did not look completely perfect the overall color and shape turned out great! Most importantly, though, was that they tasted great!

I think the only down side was that for all my hard work the recipe only yielded about 20 macarons. I would have known that had I not skimmed that part of the recipe before jumping into the bulk of the recipe.  I also skipped over the part that indicated that the difficulty level for the recipe was all the way over on the, "hard," side of the scale. Oops!   

Now, I am inspired to try making other flavors.  I think the next flavor I will try is a berry flavor with a cream-cheese butter-cream filling. 

February Trip to NY: Part 2

The the second leg of my New York trip was meeting up with my friends May and Josephine at areally awesome Japanese restaurant called Inayaka http://www.inakayany.com/ .  I posted a photo of my desert here because even though May and Josephine are both beautiful, I unfortunately look horrible in all of the pictures we took.

It happened to be restaurant week during my visit and we were able to get quite a good three course meal at a very reasonable price. I loved how the waiter would call out our orders in Japanese to the chefs and the chefs would shout back to the waiter. I had no idea what they saying but it was very cool because it was in Japanese. Craig later made fun of me (in a lovingly joking sort of way of course) saying that it was akin to ordering at a Waffle House or something that the waiter would shout out,  "2 egg special! Side of hash browns!" and the short order cook would repeat it back.  This was A LOT better than the Waffle House though!

Another thing I thought was super neat was that since we were eating at the sushi bar our drinks and food were served to us on a paddle that the chef used to reach across from the kitchen to where we were sitting. Then, toward the middle of our meal there was a slight commotion in the dining room when two chefs were taking turns pounding sticky rice with large mallets into sheets of mochi.

One thing that really stands out to me about the friends I have made in NY is that even though nearly two years had gone by with very little action in the keeping in touch process, I feel like the three of us got together as if no time had really passed at all. Everything fell into place as if it was just one of our many get togethers when I was still living in NYC.  I wish the three of us had more time to spend together during my visit but I am really glad that we were able to get together even for a short time.

Buona Pasqua!

This Easter, was a really nice one. To start off, Craig and I actually went to Church (more about my recent return to Church later). We sat with our friends Jennifer and Kevin and their families.

After Church we went home and accomplished a few chores around the house before driving to my parents house for a wonderful Easter dinner.

When we arrived my mom had a nice appetizer spread ready on the kitchen table with some anti-pasta and a 7-layer dip with some tortilla chips to snack on. Craig and I brought over some left over cheese bread puffs that Craig had made for Saturday's fancy tailgate at the Hurricane's game. We spent some time just chit chatting and also taking turns walking around with my almost 4 month old nephew who was a little fussy but fun none the less.

Dinner started with a salad and then some pasta with Italian sausage. Then we had a little break to digest. When dinner resumed we had lamb, honey glazed baby carrots, asparagus, and garlic roasted potatoes. It was delicious!

One dilemma I ended up having was that in the weeks prior to Easter I made a really big deal about having mint jelly to go with the lamb. Well, imagine my surprise when I found out that my mom, in addition to having mint jelly on hand, also made an awesome home made Tzatziki sauce to go on the lamb. I couldn't not have the mint jelly that I had so strongly requested, but I really wanted to try the Tzatziki! In the end I compromised and had a little bit of both.

After dinner, along with some coffee we feasted on the special Easter cupcakes my mom made. They looked so cute and good enough to sell in a cupcake shop! They were chocolate cupcakes with some white icing. She took some shredded coconut and mixed it with a little green food coloring to make edible eastro-turf and sprinkled it on top of the cupcakes. Then she nestled a few jelly beans on top of them and then sprinkled a few on the platter they were sitting on. They were really neat, and they tasted great too!

All in all it was a pretty nice day. The weather was great and after my sister and her family left, Craig and I stayed a little longer and sat on the back porch talking with my parents for awhile. I was a little sad to have to go home when it was time to leave.